Saints and Sinners
by dontcancelhousever
Summary: Michael Corleone has always been one to analyze, even if he wishes he could stop. Slash - Sonny/Tom


Taboos had always been attractive to Michael Corleone. His choice of wives, both careers, the majority of his individual choices were in violation of tradition or expectation, especially his family's but often enough, also society's. The forbidden sang to him, would make him the Don king. It was why, from a very young age, Michael understood his 'brother' Tom.

Well, not quite understood, he wouldn't appreciate the experience of Tom and Sonny's meeting until he experienced his own thunder bolt, but he was wise enough to know, even then, that they were not just friends. When he first met Tom, he was suspicious. Tom had been watching other children run in and out of the hydrant's geyser and Sonny had sidled up to him, a stranger, and thrown his arm around his shoulder like it was nothing. Sonny had never been warm to newcomers, he was generous but acerbic and he had never greeted any of Michael's casual friends with anything like this easiness, melting into Tom's side like he belonged there. They hadn't even been saying anything important, just lining up the neighborhood hierarchy like they weren't the same age as the soggy ruffians running around.

After that, Tom would meet them to play ball after school or chat with Sonny through the bars before the bell rung. For some unfathomable reason he didn't go to school and he would often be missing for days at a time. Sonny chattered about him incessantly, promising Fredo and Connie they could meet his new campagno. Michael wondered what the fascination was with the low voiced tow headed boy. He had sharp gray eyes that made Michael feel like he was competing somehow, even though he knew that Sonny would go after anyone who bothered him with a bat, even the Irish kid.

One day in November, Tom stopped meeting them. He simply could not be found. Sonny would press his nose up against the glass, scouring the streets on the way to school. Clemenza snapped at him, for leaving oily prints in his good car but Sonny didn't care. He pouted and pined for days about it, going with their mother or father whenever they went into town. They both assured Sonny that his friend was fine, had probably moved with his parents or to another district, but Sonny was not reassured.

One night Vito and Sonny left to go to the butcher shop for veal. They came back with Tom Hagen, bundled up in Vito's coat with Sonny's arm rubbing his back fiercely.

" He's sick Ma! Look at his eyes!," Sonny beseeched but Michael knew from the look on his father's face that no begging was necessary. Michael's mother called him bambino and made him tea, which he drank haltingly. When he sipped, his bones stood out sharply in his cheeks and temple and jaw. The easy sway of his back was gone, he hunched over the heat like the old men huddle over blazing barrels.

And Tom kept his head down, which was just as well, he didn't seem to be able to see anyway. He fell twice on his way up the stairs. Michael caught a glimpse of his eyes, and they were both blood red, one of them sealed shut with a copper crust. Fredo moved into his room that night and over his snores, Michael heard water for a long while then Tom coughing in Sonny's room. Sonny's voice murmured softly throughout. He hadn't heard Sonny speak like that since Fredo had turned his bike handle around he'd scraped all the skin off his shin. It made him bizarrely jealous. He wasn't blood, wasn't Sicilian.

A doctor came the next day and gave them capsules and drops for Tom. Sonny looked ready to wrestle them away but their mother administered them, which Michael thought was odd since he'd thought his father would want to do it. But instead his father stood halfway outside the room and waited with the rest of the family. The extra cot from the cellar had been laid out (and pounded of dust if the lumps were anything to go by) and Tom lay flat and silent, like he was dead. Only the jump of wrist let them know that the drops hurt. Sonny was petting his whole side like a cat. Vito took Michael's hand and led him downstairs. He put Michael in his lap and they watched Clemenza roll meatballs.

Even after he healed and was gaining weight, Tom was odd for a while. He would stare at nothing for long periods of time and he slept a lot of the day. He didn't speak much but he managed to explain that his father was dead (and a drunk, Sonny said) and when his mother had gone, he'd had nowhere to go. She'd gone blind before she died, he'd said and there was no mistaking the weight of gratitude in his still bleary eyes. Vito never made him say it, instead he passed the lasagna down the table and Sonny, grinning, shoveled more on his plate.

When Tom was better, he went with them to school, sitting beside Sonny. It made the backseat even more cramped and Michael begrudged the change in routine with annoyance. It would be how he'd feel about most of the changes that came with Tom, especially as it became apparent how similar they both were. Tom, though he learned his phrases and mannerisms, was not Sonny. He could never be as simple as Fredo or hold Connie's cheery delusions.

He was like Michael, intelligent and cool and he became the big brother Michael never wanted. He called him 'Mike', he popped in to look over his homework, where Tessio used to. When Sonny dropped out he shepherded the rest of them around. Tom's desire to be Michael's brother made it that much more difficult for Michael to accept it with anything less than polite derision. Only later would he understand that Tom was an easy lightning rod for all the other changes overtaking the family. The distance between the siblings was growing. Sonny was obsessed with Pop's business, Fredo wanted girls with long thighs and easy living, Connie was finding her own friends ( and getting cut out of their old collusions) and that left Tom and Mike.

But it wasn't just those things. It was that every time he saw Tom now, he imagined what kind of sex he had with Sonny. It was just impossible not to. He knew what they felt for each other, always viscerally understood it and then had words for it as Oscar Wilde and Alexander the Great traipsed by in his studies. There was no doubt in his mind, especially as time passed. The fantasies grew from chaste to sucking kisses, from rustling under the covers to wild frottage against the walls. He wanted to deny it was something that Sonny would want but Sonny's love for Tom was jealous and loud, Tom knew he'd take everything Tom offered and more. It almost made him feel bad for Tom but then his brain would flash an image of Tom on his knees and it would sour Michael again. The fact that he got hard more often than not was especially disconcerting.

Michael thought that if he replaced his fantasies with reality, he could at least stop dwelling on it but he could never catch them. They were around each other constantly but there was nothing to go on, nothing concrete that could sate his mind's eye. And it got worse as he started to forget life before Tom, started to call him brother, even in his mind. Because that didn't dim the fantasies.

Sonny was always the pitcher in these scenarios; Michael could not see him lying on his back for anybody, even Tom. In fact, especially Tom, whose favor he seemed bent on re-winning every day. Even as Sonny got older (and his mammoth size became neighborhood legend) he still couldn't rewrite the situation to change, not even a tradeoff flitted through his head, though he had a dream once that he caught Sonny giving Tom head. He'd gone for a long walk that morning and not spoken to anyone. It was making him crazy, made it harder to hug Tom and not imagine Sonny's hands on his chest or cupped protectively over his spine. He couldn't hear Tom's particular, high 'Hehe' laughter ring through the house without imagining Sonny lifting him up against the door and letting him knock his head. He had imagined Tom's face, rent with ecstasy like a saint's, more times than he had even seen a real lover in front of him.

In the marines, he saw two guys together, making out behind an artillery shed. They were terrified, the whites of their eyes catching like horses at him and he told no one. But the sheen of their bodies, the writhing motions, didn't pull anything from him. It shocked him a bit to realize it was because they weren't _family_.

Ironically, he would get his proof a few weeks before he'd leave home, before he'd say goodbye to Sonny forever, before Tom became the only one in the entire world he could trust. He didn't catch them with their paints open. He saw no red flesh or sweat soaked hair, or wet trading mouths. Instead it was the day after he'd gotten his jaw broken by a police captain. Drugged and aching, he watched them argue, Tom avoiding Sonny's eyes as he tried to keep his voice strong (and keep Sonny alive), Sonny bursting then quieting in turn. It was later, after he'd been practicing with his duct taped gun with Clemenza that he saw them as they really were.

Tom and Sonny were pilfering bits of bread and sauce, a practice as old as Tom's first week in the Corleone house. He was always eating sporadically, even now, as if he was afraid he'd wake up under a bench, frozen and dying and all of this a delirious pipe dream. Sonny ate because it was there and he was Sonny. He was reaching in to dip the bread, risking his own sleeves for Tom's and pushing it back into his face. Tom, distracted, squawked as the wet bread smeared red up his chin. Michael, from the hallway, felt his stomach drop. Maybe Sonny would lick it off. But he didn't. Instead he swiped the sauce off his cheek with his own thumb and then sucked it off, with no hesitation, as if they had done it a thousand times before. "Open your mouth this time," he bitched and Tom grumbled. Sonny said something under his breath to this and Tom, with the same ease that his mother had when she braced her hands on Pop's shoulders, reached out and carded his hand into Sonny's curly hair. Sonny kept digging for sauce. Tom said, " You need a haircut, it's gonna get in the sauce and Mama will rip it out." Then he tucked a curl behind Sonny's ear and nearly choked when Sonny shoved a crust in his mouth. Sonny rubbed his arm and tried not to laugh. Then he leaned forward and in the warm golden light of their kitchen, brushed his forehead against Tom's sweetly.

Michael stepped away. He'd always seen it as an animal thing, Tom bent and open to Sonny's will, Sonny ferocious and biting and possessive. The narrative changed. Now the image wasn't Sonny swinging Tom's legs over his shoulders, prying him open and taking it all, it was Tom laying his head on Sonny's thigh or Sonny taking Tom for a drive. Tom wasn't Sonny's whore, he was Sonny's wife.

The thoughts stopped, it wasn't forbidden to think about your brother's spouse. It was common and small. And Michael had greater sins to purvey. But it left room for the realization that of all the brothers to have been left with, he was blessed that it was Tom. Two old men with broken hearts and deep secrets.


End file.
